Purpose: Company pressure for manufacturers is mounting from two angles: increasing pressure of global competition, and rapid advancements in technology such as additive manufacturing (AM) that are altering the way that goods are manufactured. The purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption process of AM within a manufacturing system and its business impact.Design/methodology/approach: Research was conducted to collect empirical data at two manufacturing case companies in the North West England. Both cases are located in areas of industrial recovery using AM engineering innovation for value creation.Findings: Early findings showed that the implementation of AM caused a shift in value propositions and the creation of additional value streams (VSs) for the case study companies. AM was shown to compliment and strengthen traditional manufacturing VSs rather than replacing them.Research limitations/implications: Limitations include the generalizability due to the number and location of case companies included in this research.Practical implications: It is worthwhile to explore the opportunities that AM brings with the existing customer base as it has the potential to add unexplored and untapped value. However, managers need to be mindful of the capability and resources required to put the VS into practice.Social implications: Both cases resulted in skill retainment and development due to the implementation of AM. Hence, the innovation contributed to regional economic recovery and business survival.Originality/value: This empirical research is one of the early field explorations focussing on the impact of AM on VS structures. Hence, this paper contributes to the area of technology enhanced manufacturing systems.

Jugaad is the latest/trend in management and business reports of India's awakening. The term refers to the widespread practice in rural India of jury-rigging and customizing vehicles using only available resources and know-how. While the practice is often accompanied by indigence and corruption in traditional interpretations, the notion of jugaad has excited many commentators on India's emergence into the global economy in its promise of an inimitable Indian work ethic that defies traditional associations of otherworldliness and indolence – widely reported as inherent in India's society and culture. Jugaad has been identified across India's economy in the inventiveness of call-centre workers, the creativity of global transnational elites, and in the innovativeness of Indian product designs. The term has seen an unprecedented growth in popularity and is now proffered as a tool for development and a robust solution to global recession. Jugaad is now part of a wider method for working within resource constraints as ‘Indovation’. In this context, the trope is presented as an asset that India can nurture and export. This article argues that far from being an example of ‘disruptive innovation’, jugaad in practice is in fact part and parcel of India's systemic risk and should not be separated from this framing. Viewed from this optic, jugaad impacts on society in negative and undesirable ways. Jugaad is a product of widespread poverty and underpins path dependencies stemming from dilapidated infrastructure, unsafe transport practices, and resource constraints. These factors make it wholly unsuitable both as a development tool and as a business asset. The article questions the intentions behind jugaad's wider usage and adoption and explores the underlying chauvinism at work in the term's links to India's future hegemonic potential.

An editorial introduction to a special section on the disruptions to air travel triggered by Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull's eruptions in April and May 2010. A spontaneously organized workshop and open call for papers gathered together analyses from different perspectives – systems theory, impromptu surveys, personal reflection, literary and philosophical probing. This introduction explores some of the connecting themes and highlights the strange, surprising and potently revealing nature of strandedness in a world of mobile lives.

There is a growing body of work in geography and sociology on the impact of drones on warfare, surveillance and civil protest. This paper assesses the challenges of using drones for teaching human geography and spatial social sciences. Affordable and expensive drones are now available in the market place; however, there has been next to no reflection on how drones might impact upon the social sciences as a research tool. Yet, unmanned flying vehicles pose some profound possibilities for social and cultural inquiry and aerial data collection.